HIV MALINGERING IN THE ACCIDENT AND EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT

This paper reports a number of cases of patients attending an accident and emergency (A&E) department claiming to be HIV positive when they have been tested negative and are known to be negative by other depart ments in the hospital. The reasons for these patients claims are not a lways apparent. These patients may place an inappropriate workload on an already busy department. We caution doctors working in A&E departme nts to be vigilant when dealing with patients who claim to be HIV posi tive when there are no clinical or laboratory findings to substantiate the claim and we recommend liaison between relevant departments withi n a hospital and the patient's general practitioner (GP) when dealing with these patients.